#23: Homeward

You know how it is when you are heading home?   It is a dash to the finish: drive, drive, drive, switch drivers, and drive, drive, drive some more.  We said goodby to Alexis on Sunday morning and promised to email her from Guelph in about 4 days.

The paramount rule of a speedy return is: no stopping, except to get gas, change drivers, eat lunch (a healthy Subway chicken salad), eat dinner (on a very bad day I had another chicken salad), and find a place to sleep.  I swear, that if the reincarnation of Elvis Presley had been hitching a ride to Reno on Highway 80/95, we would have zoomed right by.

Along Interstate 80 through Nevada. 

But that doesn't mean that I didn't take photographs when we did stop, or snap a picture out the window of our moving vehicle.

Just where would an escaped prisoner  go?

I suppose this limited vantage point accounts for why I should probably never write promotional material for the state of Nevada.  I'm sure parts of it are very pretty, but these places must have been where we were not.  However, the insalubrious landscape does seem to be ideal for correctional facilities. There are no less than five prisons on Interstate 80, leading us to conclude that Corrections and Casinos are two cornerstones of the Nevada economy.

Wyoming, home of tumble weeds before they fall.

Our route took us in a north-easterly direction from Nevada through Wyoming and Utah. Straight. On. Through.

A return road trip is when you drive like hell toward an interesting place like Salt Lake City, but then you make every effort to go around it.  You crane your neck for signs that say bypass and ring road.  You see the signs for Temple Square and go in the opposite direction.

The result is that I know nothing of Utah. We were too busy steering ourselves out of the state, across Nebraska towards Des Moines, Iowa, a city we did not want to circumvent because it was to be our overnight stop.  As it turned out, the rest of the world was also bound for Des Moines.  Who knew?  We pulled into the Holiday Inn, the Hampton Inn and Howard Johnson's. No Vacancy. Finally, we resorted to the GPS Accommodations function and phoned two other places, but they were also completely booked.  Huh?  Finally, it was a tossup: drive to the Walmart parking lot and sleep in the car, or go to the only motel with vacancies, a Des Moines Econolodge.

Just like our room.  I wonder if the door locks?

Our Econolodge host was a sweet and helpful South Asian teenager with an Indian accent.  We had checked in with his father, but it was the son who had to solve the problem of the doors-that-could-not-be-locked.  As we carried our luggage from one room to another in search of a functioning door, I had brief Best Exotic Marigold Hotel fantasies.  But Des Moines is not Bollywood.  No bhangra soundtrack, no elephants.  What we did get was a clean and comfortable place for the night with (finally), a door we could secure.  The young man explained that they were replacing door frames in all the units.  I guess they need to replace the doors, too, but refurbishing an older motel from top to bottom is probably a very expensive proposition for new owners hoping to grab a piece of American Pie.   I wish them luck.     


In any case, so close to the finish of our 4 1/2 day dash across the continent, one iffy night is nothing.

By Thursday noon, we were well into the homeward stretch.  We crossed the Bluewater Bridge at Sarnia, and looked for a place to have lunch.  The thought of a Subway chicken salad made us gag.

We scanned the horizon. Tim Horton's!  OMG. I happily ordered our usual: two turkey-bacon-club sandwiches, two black coffees and forget the donuts. We really were home.